Daily Routine

Dear Loyal Reader,

I know the only thing that remains unclear to you about this entire adventure is what I do every day, besides blog. Hopefully this post will help explain things.

Best,

Louis

Every day, I go to the Bibliothèque Nationale Département de la Musique, at 2 Rue de Louvois in the 2e Arrondissement.

Inside, I read books, search through the card catalogue (yes, a real card catalogue, which for whatever reason is much better organized than the online catalogue), get chastised by librarians for requesting things the wrong way, and I learn. Oh boy, do I learn. I love learning. That's why I'm in this business.

Still, research is taxing and sometimes frustrating, so it should come as no surprise that my favorite part of the day tends to be lunch. Around 1:30 every afternoon, as long as it's not raining, I head just across the street from the music library to the Square Louvois, located on one former site of the Paris Opéra (it kept moving around due to frequent fires until 1875, when the Palais Garnier was completed).

This is what I look at while I eat lunch (usually from the other side, which is ensoleillé (sunny)):

This is what it sounds like to eat lunch there:

After enjoying four courses (usually some kind of sandwich, peanuts, dessert, a piece of fruit) and the conversation of my neighbors, I head back inside, rather full and a little drowsy. Surprisingly, the sounds the microfilm machines make have the habit of lulling me to sleep:

That's why I try to avoid reading from microfilm right after lunch. For the rest of the afternoon, I alternate reading from books and reading from microfilm. Sometimes, if I need to wake myself up or to hear a music example in a book I'm reading, I play piano in one of two small rooms they make available to lecteurs (readers/library patrons). Thoroughly wood-paneled, these rooms not only smell like a sauna but are woefully un-sound-proof. I can't decide what's worse: that you can't get recordings in this music library, or that you can't avoid the faint sounds of people like me playing out-of-tune pianos in rooms adjacent to the reading room. Maybe they should start offering earplugs.